Abstract

The U.S. Consumer Expenditure (CE) Interview Survey began utilizing
the CAPI instrument for data collection in April 2003. In this paper,
the CAPI method is compared to the conventional PAPI method. We
compare mean expenditures and reporting rates across groups defined
by expenditure categories, respondent demographic variables, and interviewer
variables. We will provide the relevant literature review, with
special attention to the mode effect. We also will present an overview
of the CE Interview Survey and CAPI application. Finally, we will describe
the comparison study and present the statistical tools used. The
proposed methods are applied to selected subsets of items from the
CE Interview Survey. Specifically, we distinguish between parts that
were exact translations of the PAPI version and parts with additional
changes, such as wording and order changes.